Lie
by iglowindark
Summary: A heart-breaking discovery for Maura. Implied relationship.


Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, just borrowing them.

AN: So, not the most cheerful story to drop in the middle of the off-season, but it wouldn't get out of my head until I had written it. Hopefully the writing gremlins are ready to skew back to fun and happy.

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Maura Isles could lie.

It wasn't that she had lied about being incapable of lying. She just hadn't known. Hadn't understood that there was, in fact, a particular set of circumstances that would allow her to deliberately speak an untruth without breaking into hives and hyperventilating. She wished she still didn't know. She would happily live the rest of her life under the assumption that lying was a physical impossibility for her.

_Everything will be okay._

It was a startling discovery, one that she hadn't been expecting, hadn't been looking for. It was upsetting. If she could lie, and she had lived her whole life believing otherwise, then what other false impressions was she laboring under? Of course, realistically, she knew that she never really categorized lying as "impossible"; there was no way to prove impossibility. But in common parlance, it was enough to know that she had never come across an instance in which lying did not result in an immediate and violent physiological response. And so when her friends said it was "impossible" for her to lie, she readily assented.

_I can hear them getting closer. They're almost here._

Angela was being extremely solicitous towards her. They all were, of course, but Angela most of all. Maura suspected it was because her own mother was in Europe, a showcase in Berlin, and Angela felt the need to fill the mother-shaped void. Sometimes it was little bit overwhelming, but Maura realized that it probably benefited Angela as well. Jane didn't allow for much "mothering", and Maura had the distinct impression that Angela would love to formally adopt her if only so that they could go shopping together and talk about men, and clothes, and shoes and coo over babies and small children, all the things that Jane would make a face at, accompanied by her grumbling whine "Maaaaaaaaaaa!".

_I'm going to stay here with you. Just focus on controlling your breathing._

The worst part, for Maura, was that Angela didn't know why she had to fill the role of sympathetic mother. She knew a the basics of what had happened, but Maura's full confession - the disclosure of her lie - had only been to Vince and Barry. She was sure that they hadn't told that part to Angela. Angela was mothering her because she sensed she needed to; Maura shuddered to think of what Angela's reaction might be if she learned the full truth. And that of course only meant that Maura was lying again. A lie of omission. Apparently lying was a slippery slope. One false statement out of her mouth and now it was as though she couldn't stop. And yesterday, realizing that this lie of omission was her second in less than a week had sent her into a small fit of hysterics. Vince and Barry had covered for her, blaming it on everything else that was going on. They had lied for her. In the span of a few days, Maura's entire world had devolved into a web of deceit.

_I think I have a slight concussion. And I don't have full range of motion in my right shoulder. Do you have any room to slide out?_

Maybe Angela was also trying to make up for the fact that none of the siblings Rizzoli had spoken to Maura since the incident. They were busy, they said. They had to take care of some things. They just couldn't - not yet. They knew, of course, what Angela didn't know. Vince or Barry had told them. Told them the one detail that they had spared Angela. Maura understood. She wouldn't push them. And she would tell them the truth, all of it, if they asked. She hoped they wouldn't ask. Reliving the moment once, her confession spilling out of her mouth in a jumbled rush of words, to Vince and Barry, had been awful. She had no desire to do it again.

_Jane? Jane, look at me. We're ok, I promise. Calm down._

Sometimes Maura truly felt that her social awkwardness was a curse. Most people would have been able to interpret the situation. Most people would have known if Vince and Barry and Cavanaugh and the Rizzoli children were actually mad, or if they were just in shock. None of them had outright blamed her, but still. She wondered if Jane was mad at her. It was Jane, after all, who had made such a big deal of Maura's inability to lie. Maura figured that in Jane's line of work, when she constantly had to read people and fight through layers of bullshit to get to the truth, sometimes even with her family, it must be refreshing to be around someone like Maura, someone whom Jane could force raw veracity out of with nothing more than a question. Not that she often did. There was an unspoken understanding, a truce. Jane didn't force Maura to lay herself bare and Maura allowed Jane her protective layer of sarcasm. So it only made it worse, the fact that it had been Jane that she had lied to. She had lied to Jane. To her face. It made her nauseous.

_Jane, if you wear a skirt to Sunday dinner, I'll buy you season tickets to baseball, any seats you want._

There would be no season tickets. No calming down. No sliding out, no controlling her breathing. They weren't close enough, and things would never be ok.

Tears trickled down Maura's face as her doorbell rang. That would be Vince and Barry. In their dress blues. Their badges proudly displayed on their chests, wrapped in the black band of a fallen comrade. They were taking her to the funeral, because she was positive that she shouldn't be behind the wheel in this state. Angela and Frankie and Tommy were already there, meeting Frank Sr.

Maura took a deep breath as she pushed herself away from the counter. As it turned out, she could lie. And she would lie every day for the rest of her life, telling everybody that she was ok. She would cope, and eventually she would smile. But without Jane, she was never going to make it all the way back to ok.


End file.
